


Un(requited)

by Theincrediblesulkmachine



Series: SheithAngstWeek2018 [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Astral Plane, Day One, M/M, Perpetually late to the party, Post Season 2, SHEITH - Freeform, This finally broke my writers block!, Unrequited, prompts, sheith angst week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-14 01:39:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16030343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Theincrediblesulkmachine/pseuds/Theincrediblesulkmachine
Summary: Weep not for roads untravelled, weep not for paths left alone.





	Un(requited)

**Author's Note:**

> All i can say is that i am and always have been horrid at following schedules of any and all kinds. I really really wanted to partake in SheithAngstWeek2018 however, so here is my meager contribution; it finally broke the writers block spanning the last month (or two) so i'm really excited about this.
> 
> Better late than never, i guess. 
> 
> I'll be uploading the rest as soon as i finish reading through them. Hope you enjoy this, short as it is.
> 
> Summary from Linkin Park's song, "Roads Untravelled"

* * *

_How uninspired._

That’s Shiro’s first thought _after_ , once the disorientation ceases and he’s left empty and cold.

Its... nothingness. A _nothing_ that encompasses everything; a brilliant field of onyx spattered with stars as far as the eye can see.

Vacant.

He had expected more from death, really.

Maybe his parents- the ones he had never known- waiting to finally meet him with outstretched arms; Obaa-san- who had raised him- with her warm, welcoming smile, and the honeyed grey eyes he had taken after.

He had expected a lot more from life too.

Shiro thinks with a pang of Keith, and only allows himself a moment to linger on that brand of torment, the _could have, would have, should have_ beens.

A thousand moments where Shiro _could have_ told him.

(Keith _would have_ accepted him with open arms, whether he felt the same way or not.)

A million moments where Shiro _should have_.

(Thinking back to the fondness in Keith’s galactic eyes, the softness of his smile- the one seemingly reserved for Shiro- he thinks that despite all his fears when he had had the opportunity, his concern had been unwarranted.

 _It hadn’t been unreciprocated,_ he thinks, and it’s the first thing to really hurt Shiro in this non-state of existence.)

In a way, even though it hurts to think of Keith, it doesn’t because it links him to the physical form he had had.

(It also doesn’t because he cannot truly feel anything)

He gently folds the memory deeper into his conscience, this strange formless sense of being, because even as a non-entity Shiro can’t bear to push Keith away.

Keith had always been special, and as that impossible face flashes in his mind’s eye, Shiro realizes that the well of emotion that it always invoked, ran deeper still.

They must have to reach him in this void.

(It’s beside the point now.)

The one other thing he knows with certainty is that he’s dead; what else could this be?

But despite the way it had always shadowed Shiro- his disease, the lingering cloud of inevitability looming over his head- now that it has finally claimed him, Shiro finds himself discontent.

There had been so much heat, so much sensation in the moment of… _too_ much. It stings, Shiro realizes, that he had to bear so much; torture at the hands of the Galra- the loss of his arm, his identity, his dignity- fighting for scraps of food and survival…forever fighting for the chance to live, and then to find himself gone without a trace, in a wisp of instant between there and _not._

There’s no sensation, not truly- Shiro can’t even really feel the depth of the bitterness that he knows should be there, that’s always dogged him despite his best efforts.

His time has come, and there’s no beautiful afterlife.

There’s _this_ , and the cold.

And then even _that_ fades.

(Shiro finds himself fading with it.)

***

In the aftermath of a panic that eats away all of Keith’s ability to remain calm, there is nothing.

The cockpit of the Black Lion is empty.

He had felt the certainty of something having gone horribly wrong the minute he had seen Black adrift in space, lifeless, amidst the debris of metal and rock.

A curdling in his gut, lead in his blood vessels, a cold hand gripping his heart.

He hates that even through the nothingness that shrouds everything, there is _pain_.

Shiro is _gone_.

Hasn’t the universe taken enough from him?

Mother, and abandonment.

Father, and loss.

Shiro.

Hasn’t the universe taken Shiro from him enough?

Devastation.

That’s the emotion that brings him to his knees.

 _Shiro_.

Keith had never known his mother, so he hadn’t known to mourn that. For his father, it had been bittersweet; Keith had met the girl he saved, and seen the tears of relief of her family, and realized he didn’t begrudge them their happiness.

He had been very sad, but he had also been young, and resilient, and maybe to an extent he never fully realized then what a life without a father meant.

Shiro had been a revelation, a friend, a brother, a support like no other.

There was no wonder that he had fallen to pieces when Shiro had been taken from him, that first time.

Keith had lost a brother _then_.

Standing here now at the cusp of desolation- an empty chair and an abandoned bayard in front of him, Shiro’s hopes for him weighing down his shoulders- Keith realizes that this time he’s lost so much more.

Keith had longed for, and loved and _loved_ , and he had lost him.

_Keith had lost Shiro._

This time it felt final.

Keith screamed, or maybe he wept- maybe he did both.

All he knew was the anguish that drowned him.

Everything else was fleeting.

It always was.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know how you really feel!
> 
> Come say hello on tumblr [@theincrediblesulkmachine](http://theincrediblesulkmachine.tumblr.com/)


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